I’m writing this today because to me there’s nothing more important in this life than what I have to tell you.
Often, it happens that the situation doesn’t lend itself to deeper, more serious conversation, so I got the idea to write this letter to you so you can read it when you have time.
I give this letter only to those people God puts on my heart, not just anyone. You are special to me, but infinitely special to God. I’m definitely a rank and file sinner, but I’m saved and born again by an infinitely loving and merciful God.

I have a real burden on my heart to share with you what the Bible says about salvation, and where we go when we die. People don’t even seem to think much about this these days. I didn’t either until I was 27.
I was raised Catholic, and I took my relationhship with God very seriously. Spiritual things always interested me. I tried to get closer to God through my Catholic church, but as a young adult, I didn’t feel Him there at all. In fact, it felt dead in church and in the Mass. I was hungry for a real connection. I wanted the real thing!

I turned to the Bible, which even the Roman Catholic church recognizes as a spiritual authority, although the Popes and their decrees are considered the final word on everything.
All I knew to do at the time was to go to a local “St. Jude Shop” where they sold Catholic Bibles, statues, jewelry, etc. I bought a St. Joseph’s Bible and rushed home to see what it said. I had a list of questions I was hoping to get answered: Is it right to pray to saints or Mary? Is Jesus really in the bread at the Mass like they teach? And more. God directed me because I did not know the Bible at all – Catholics weren’t encouraged to read it. I was taught that only a priest can rightly interpret it.

I cracked it open at random, and my eyes fell on 1 Timothy 2:5 which says, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;” This was written by St. Paul, the apostle. Wow! That answered my question about praying to saints and Mary. Paul said they were not mediators! That started me on some deep research into the Roman Catholic church, it’s background, doctrine and decrees.

In a nutshell, I learned that Catholicism is based on getting to heaven by “being a good person,” “doing good works,” “receiving the sacraments.” There was also: burning in Purgatory for as long as it takes to pay for your sins (which is exactly like hell, but temporary, while hell is permanent).
And then there are indulgences: plenary and partial. Plenary erases all your sins so if you died right after you got it, you’d go right to heaven. Partial indulgences pay for only some of your sins – shortening your time in Purgatory. These indulgences were earned by saying certain prayers and doing certain things. I used to get them frequently as a grade school kid. I thought it was so cool.

This is true Catholic doctrine, written in Vatican documents. However, to make it even more confusing, I was taught that each priest was allowed to interpret these things as he saw fit. Not to mention, he alone could forgive your sins because only he had the authority as a Catholic priest to do so in the sacrament of confession. We were never told we could just ask God to forgive us directly. (See 1 John 1:9)

I never heard the word ‘repent.’ I found out later, from the Bible, Jesus taught us to repent (be truly sorry for our sins, and turn away from them) and trust His work of suffering and dying on the cross as the only acceptable payment for sin.

So it turns out that the Bible, or Holy Scripture, which is God’s Word, has a message, a theme for us running throughout the whole thing…old and new testament. It’s that God loves us so much He doesn’t want anyone to go to hell (which was made only for the angels that rebelled against Him) so He made a way to cover our sins and blot them out. That was only possible by the shedding of the blood of a 100% pure, and innocent sacrifice. That’s why Jesus was born – to be that sacrifice, to pay for each person’s sins. This is the only way to approach God, the Father. Jesus Himself said, “…I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; No one comes to the Father except by Me.” (John 14:6)

No sacraments, no rules and regulations, no good works or repeated prayers can ever pay or make up to a holy God for our sins. Only trusting faith like a little child in Jesus finished work on the cross for us satisfies our God.

Jesus warned us about hell in the New Testament alone 46 times! He died so we could join Him in Heaven and never go to hell. There is no Purgatory, that is a man-made doctrine not mentioned in Holy Scripture, as is the idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without sin. That is based on a dream a Pope once had! Did you know that the Immaculate Conception doctrine does not refer to Jesus’ conception, but Mary’s own conception in her own mother’s womb?! True! Roman Catholicism subsequently teaches that Mary herself lead a perfectly sinless life, putting her on a par with Jesus…a type of goddess herself. From the Bible we know that she was a wonderful, godly woman, but a sinner who needed a Savior, just as we all do as she herself mentions in Luke 1:47.

The first word Jesus said when He began His public ministry was, “Repent!” in Matt.4:17. Jesus did not preach a tolerant acceptance of other’s beliefs and opinions. He taught repentance and obedience to God and His Word. As Bill Wiese says in his book, 23 Questions About Hell: a loving message isn’t always sweet and nice; at times it may be a rebuke or be corrective in nature. Jesus doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, but spend eternity in heaven with Him! He wants each one of us to admit we are a sinner and turn from our sin and change our ways. That is what ‘repent’ means.

To be sure that you will go to heaven when you die, you must believe Jesus paid for your personal sins on His cross. The Father accepted His sacrifice for you, me and all mankind as payment in full! It’s His free gift of love to us! If you’d like to receive this gift you can simply talk to Him and tell Him something like this:

Dear Heavenly Father,
I come to You in the name of Jesus.
Your Word says, “He that comes to Me, I will in no way cast out” (John 6:37), so I know You won’t cast me out, but You take me in and I thank You for it.
You said in You Word, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). I am calling on Your Name, so I know You have saved me now.
You also said, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes producing righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made producing salvation. (Romans10:9-10)
I believe in my heart Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe that He was raised from the dead for my justification, and I confess Him now as my Lord.
Because Your Word says, “With the heart man believes producing righteousness,” and I do believe with my heart, I have now become the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21) …And I am saved!
Thank You, Lord!
You can sign and date the above prayer so you never will forget the day you became God’s child and stepped into eternal life! (Prayer composed by Reverend Kenneth E. Hagin)

Now you are a new creature in Christ! (2 Corinthians 5:17) Seek to know your new Savior. Read His Word the Bible every day. Try to read a chapter a day. The Bible says Jesus is the Word of God! You can start in the gospel of John. Ask a godly Christian who loves the Lord your questions as they come up about what you read. Underline verses that pop out to you or seem special or stand out like a neon sign to you (as one Christian writer once said!) – that is the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart. Expect Him to communicate with you; He loves you and wants to talk to you!

Start to pray. Not formulated ritualistic prayers, but genuine talking to Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit as if they were real personalities, because they are! Talk about anything on your mind. Pour out your heart to God. Talk about big and little things. Ask Him questions. Ask for His help with anything! Keep a little journal of answered prayer – you will be amazed at the lively, loving relationship you’ll have!

Find a Bible-teaching church that has a heart to reach the lost and teaches salvation by faith. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you to the right one.

As the Holy Spirit guides you – start to forgive everyone who has ever hurt you. Let go of it! Unforgiveness in your heart towards others blocks your Heavenly Father’s forgiveness of your sin (Mark 11:26). It only hurts you! Tear up the old I.O.U.’s you hold against other people from the past. Tell God you forgive them, and they don’t owe you anything anymore! You’re free!

If you’ve hurt anyone seek them out and ask their forgiveness, in person if possible. Let the Holy Spirit show you who they are.

Lastly, in order to start off your brand new life in the best way possible, cut off all occult connections as the Holy Spirit shows you. Don’t give satan any doorways into your life. See the www.Spiritwithus.com blog post on the paranormal for more information on this topic.

Thank you so much for reading to the end! If I can be of any help, or you just have some questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My number is 484-753-5777. Just leave a message and I will call you back, asap. Or text me, or email me at jules.spiritwithus@gmail.com.

I highly recommend you read the book 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese. You can get it on Amazon.

For your own personal Bible – which will become a living treasure to you – I recommend the Spirit Filled Life Bible, New King James by Nelson.

There is a great free phone app by Tecarta that let’s you choose between a few versions of the scriptures. I have the Amplified Bible on mine, and I love it

I suggest you get a physical Bible that you can write in and underline and love everyday, as well as the phone app!

Hi Christine, and all those interested in the paranormal. I’m going to dive right in since blog posts and apps don’t lend themselves to lengthy writing. First, I want to recommend that you watch a video I recorded called ‘Demon Possession at the Party.’ It’s on YouTube but you have to type in the title in the YouTube search to get it. It’s a new channel named SpiritWithUs, Julian Palumbo. That will give you more info than I can do here.

Dear friend who is reading this now, I bluntly warn you not to have anything to do with ghosthunting, the paranormal, seances, spiritism of any kind, so called party games such as Mary, Mary or fortune telling or ouija boards or pendulums. These are so dangerous I cannot emphasize enough how completely you must avoid them and keep any such things out of your own houses! See Perry Stone’s “Purging Your House, Pruning Your Family Tree,” chapter 2.

I’d also like to share with you this passage from Dr. Kurt Koch’s book, “Occult Bondage and Deliverance:” “There are innumerable passages in the Bible declaring quite clearly that sorcery and occultism are terrible sins which are an abomination to the Lord, and a forsaking of the living God. The following are but a few of these passages: Ex. 7:11-12 Acts 8:9 Acts 16:16 Acts 19:19 Isaiah 2:6, 8:19 2 Tim 3:8 Rev 21:8 Rev. 22:15

Quote continued, “Anyone who trespasses into Satan’s domain by committing sins of sorcery will immediately be harassed by the powers of darkness, irrespective of whether he takes the step consciously or unconsciously. …the effects make themselves felt in 5 areas of the person’s life:
1. The oppression of his spiritual life and faith, if Christian.
2. The character of the person may change to anger, temper, avarice, domineering as well as addictions may come out.
3. Sudden melancholy or depression, emotional problems
4. Mental illness or abnormalities
5. Development of mediumistic or psychic abilities End quote. I did paraphrase to condense the material as well.

Also, friends and neighbors, it is well known that when you seek out ghosts, you can easily bring them back into your home with you.
Let me also say candidly, there are no such things as ghosts, only demons masquerading as your dead relatives or figures from history or whatever, to deceive and mislead you. Have nothing to do with the powers of darkness, but rather rebuke them, the Word of God says.
If you go seeking hauntings and ghosts you will find them. And they will find you. Demons are real. They are higher intelligences than humans, being fallen angels according to Scripture. You can’t outwit them. They are liars and deceivers from the time they fell from heaven. The Bible says the devil has come to ‘steal, kill and destroy’. Who? You and me! Only in Christ do we have authority over the powers of darkness. In Luke 10:19 Jesus states, “Behold I give to you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy…” You must be a saved, born again child of God, living a holy life in order to wield that authority because the devil knows your sins and will laugh at you. The spiritual side of life is nothing to play with. Yes, there are haunted places in the earth, the Bible says so. But we are not to go into these realms. To do so is to risk your life and your family’s. The occult door you open will affect you and your children down to the third and fourth generation. The Bible tells us that we will come under a curse if we play with the occult in any form. These are things you may not connect with your ‘hobby’ of ghosthunting, such as marital strife, illnesses, accidents, losing things, and general chaos in your life. Remember these things can and will follow you home. You can even begin to have poltergeist activity in your home! Please, dear reader, be warned!

Come to Jesus, repent of sin and ask Him to be your Savior! He will fulfill those longings to be connected to the spiritual side of life that every human heart has!

Precious Reader, Satan’s deception from early ages is that we have the right to kill our babies if the reason is what we consider ‘good’ or worthy. The little one inside you, dear mother (for that is what you are, if you have gotten a positive reading on a pregnancy test!) is just as alive and whole as you are, make no mistake! This new baby is straight from the hands of the Creator in Heaven. He or she is a full person, just like you, right now. They are beloved of God, the Father in Heaven, just like you are, ever since before YOUR conception. The Bible says the Father knew you and loved you before you were concieved in your mother’s womb! And so it is with your precious baby in your womb right now! Jesus died for you and for your baby because He loves you both so much, more than our mere human minds can handle. Precious young mother, I pray that you will call any pro-life birth center, such as Birthright, or any one near you (just look up ‘pregnancy center’ or ‘pro life’ on your phone or computer), and consider adoption for your dear sweet baby, instead of the barbaric murder of abortion. God forgives everyone who comes to Him in repentance, for abortions of the past, and every sin that there is. But please don’t put this dark burden on your own heart.
There is a good and happy way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, and that is to allow your baby to have a wonderful life in a family who is praying for a child to come along that they can love as their own. This is a brave, courageous and highly praiseworthy act of love and unselfishness on your behalf! These few months of pregnancy will pass quickly anyway. Be blessed by walking in the light, not the darkness of the enemy who wants to make you a murderer and forever destroy your joy with the memory of it. Only Jesus can completely restore that joy, and He absolutely will! But giving your sweet child a birthday and a chance to live is the best way. God bless you! Please leave a comment if I can be of help in any way! Read Psalm 139, especially verse 13. If you are a precious mother who has had an abortion, you will be blessed and healed by the book Tilly by Frank Peretti.

Dear Readers, whatever drew you to this post, I pray you will find your answer in God’s Word and in His Spirit. The Holy Spirit puts this message on my heart for those involved, or thinking of getting involved in a homosexual relationship. There is a drawing, an infatuation, with the idea of a loving, sexual relationship with a person of your same sex. It seems magical, tempting, almost surreal and beautiful. Maybe even purer in a way than a sexual relationship with the opposite sex. It seems as though someone of your own sex will definitely understand you better mentally, emtionally and physically than someone of the opposite sex. And yes, they certainly would be more faithful, tender and compassionate than the opposite sex could ever be, right? Have I hit some notes that are resounding with you yet? You can feel caught up in a mesmerizing dream world in the midst of this humdrum real world. It may feel as though you are almost drugged with it…the beauty of it, the pulling desire of it. It’s so easy to take that first step, then the second, the third… Suddenly one day you wake up to the cold facts. You’ve been under a powerful delusion, a great deception of the enemy of our spirits. How could something so wonderful, so ethereal, dissolve into nothingness leaving you cold, empty and alone? At this point you scramble to replace that beautiful high. You’re confused, desparate to get it back. And you may just become aware of distant laughter as Satan delights in your misery. Another one fooled completely by his expert deception. It’s been a lie all along. But its so all encompassing, such a drug-like high, you can’t resist it . But Satan gets his fun by setting you up completely, and when you are all in, ensnared, he rips the bottom out from under you. He watches you writhe in pain and delights in every second of it!
1 Corinthians 6:9 says, “Do you not know that … those who participate in homosexuality… will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be DECIEVED! (Paraphrased from AMPC)
Precious reader, God loves you so much He has forewarned us about the great lie of homosexuality! He loves you just the way you are, whatever you have done! God’s love far surpasses human love. Don’t make the mistake of judging God’s love based on how pepple love each other. No human, man or woman, can fill this crying need we all have for this kind of God love. He will forgive you anything, if you come to Him with a heart of sincerity. Jesus blood washes all sinners clean and white as snow. No sin is too big, or too bad for the power of His blood! His love for you caused Him to shed His blood for your forgiveness. Recognize, dear reader, that homosexuality is a huge demonic, and very successful, deception of the enemy of our spirit. He comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy, scripture says. Homosexuality ensnares your spirit like a bird caught in a net. Jesus can wipe away the drug-like deception and show you the truth of His love and the wonderful life He has planned for you! Talk to Him now. Ask Him to show you the Truth. He absolutely will.

Our brother in Christ, Dave Wilkerson, was a mighty man of God. He is the very one who started Teen Challenge, wrote the book, The Cross and the Switchblade, and started the Times Square church, in Times Square, New York. He recently went to be with the Lord in 2011. He was a truly anointed man, very humble, who saw amazing miracles throughout the years of his ministry. He was especially known for his outreach to hardened gang members, drug addicts, criminals of every kind, and just sinners of all kinds.

I want to share with you one of the main ideas of his ministry that he was always trying to bring home to these toughened sinners who had given up on God a long time ago.

Simply put, the idea is the new covenant, or agreement, or deal, that God has worked out to save us from sin and hell. The Heavenly Father and Jesus His Son agreed that Jesus would take all the responsibility for human kind, if the Father would agree to accept Jesus sinless life on earth as a human,and His suffering, and death on the cross as payment in full for any human being who would receive Him as their Lord and Savior, by faith. Of course, the Father and Jesus are of one mind, one Spirit, so they agreed, out of a heart yearning with love for mankind, on this plan to save the human race from the consequences of sin.

Now here is the amazing miracle of it all. Here is the heart of God: there is no condemnation for whatever we’ve done…even whatever we continue to do… after we accept His free gift of salvation from eternal Hell! Does He expect us to live a clean life right away? NO! He doesn’t! He says to the Father, “I’m responsible for them. I’ll answer for them! I’ll take care of them! They’re mine now!”

I pray that you do accept Jesus free love gift of eternal life even today! And don’t hesitate because of hidden sin that you think is too nasty, too dark, to filthy to come to God with. No! That’s the whole point! That’s what Dave Wilkerson spent his life teaching! There is no condemnation now to those who are in Christ! Jesus loves LGBT’s, drug addicts, drunks, dealers, witches, fornicators…and on and on! Come to His amazing heart of love just as you are, and you will find forgiveness, and cleansing! You’ll be washed in the blood of the innocent Lamb of God. And now His innocence will be your innocence before the Father! He is your atonement! He is the sacrifice given for you to justify you to our dear Father of love. Jesus yearns over you with a heart bursting with love for you! Believe it. Take it on blind faith! That is the message of all the Word of God! Come to Him all you who are weary and heavy laden, and He will give you rest!

One final note: you are probably saying..What!!?? You can do all that sin, and Jesus will still love and accept you? My answer is absolutely YES! There is an amazing miracle that happens in the human heart who has experienced the unconditional love of the One who created him and died for him. You may find yourself loving Him back. You may find yourself feeling so content, so clean, so at peace that you just want more of Him! More and more and more! That’s how all of us who love Jesus so incredibly much got here! You fall madly in love with Him when you realize how much He loves you! And then it’s so easy to want to please Him. To want to make Him happy. And it grows and grows…

I give Kenneth Hagin, my mentor and brother in Christ, the credit for this message. He’s with Jesus now, but I have learned so much from him and feel like I know him personally. (Remember there is no time and/or space in the spirit realm where God is!) On with the message!

Since my divorce and remarriage, the enemy has tried to plague me as a Christian, with doubts of my salvation, and, hence, a lack of the joy of my salvation and the mighty strength that gives us as believers. A great tactic on the enemy’s part. Here’s how the devil puts it: “You (me) had no right to remarry after your divorce. Don’t you know you are living in sin now? You should leave your new husband and live alone for the rest of your life, or you will go to hell! It doesn’t matter that your former spouse verbally abused you, used pornography all his life, treated you horribly or threatened to lock you up in a sanitarium. After all he never actually did that last part. So what if he had anger issues and had you so afraid of him that you resorted to living in a locked room in your own house? You still don’t have any hard evidence that he physically cheated on you. So you have no Biblical grounds to leave him and marry another! You’re not saved, and you are going to hell!”

I woke up this morning with that issue heavy on my heart again. Funny how the enemy attacks when you are sleeping sometimes! At the same time, I heard Kenneth Hagin’s message in my ear ( I sleep with Godly sermons playing through my ear buds all night) saying something like this, “Satan, take your old photos of the past and leave! That’s all they are, just photos! The enemy will try to shut down your power for the Lord and your joy and your strength (the joy of the Lord is my strength!) by making you feel guilty where there is no guilt!”

Reverend Hagin also wrote many books among which is one titled, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage. God has used this book mightily in my life to teach me that I AM His daughter, I AM saved, and I AM going to heaven when I die! In this book Kenneth Hagin deals with the situation of a young woman whose husband to all outward appearances was a believer. However, he ran away and never came back or even contacted her. She believed her life was over at an early age…doomed to live and raise her young son alone… because the Bible says in Corinthians 7:15, “But if the unbeliever depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases…” In her case, however, her husband was a believer. Mr. Hagin pointed out to the young woman’s father, who was a pastor also, that 1 Timothy 5:8 says. “If any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” Reverend Hagin went on to explain that they are worse than unbelievers because they know better. They’ve been enlightened.

In his book, Reverend Hagin goes on to write the following: There may be a man who claims to be a Christian but is treating his wife badly, perhaps abusing her severely. The wife may have pleaded with her husband not to treat her that way. Other Christians, including the pastor (who represents the church), may have also talked with the husband. Should the wife stay in a marriage where a so-called “Christian husband” is putting her emotional and physical well being at risk? Jesus said in Matthew 10:17 that if the offending person continually disregards counsel, he is just like a heathen man. In other words, his conduct is like that of an unbeliever. He is worse than an infidel. — from Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage by Kenneth Hagin, pg. 45.

Even as I write this, the Holy Spirit is impressing me to notice well the phrase, “he has denied the faith” in that verse we just spoke of, 1Timothy5:8. Is someone who has denied the faith still a born again Christian? I don’t believe so. Praise our beautiful God who sets us free from bondage of all kinds! If you or someone you know is in a similar situation, friend, take this message of freedom and grace in Jesus to them! Romans 8:15 says, “For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God…” Hallelujah! We are not under bondage in such cases!

You can contact God. Emphasis on YOU! Scripture exists as a whole to show how much God wants to contact us. And He did reach into human affairs as far back as the creation of Adam and Eve. In fact, the reason He made them was to have a friendship, a relationship with them. Before they sided with satan (yes, I left out the capital on purpose) He used to come and visit them everyday; He walked and talked with them in the garden. He enjoyed them! Like a father with his beloved children, He just wanted to spend time with them. I love the fact that God brought each animal before Adam, and He let him name the animals. I’m sure He enjoyed seeing what His human child would name them!

But after Adam and Eve betrayed their Heavenly Father everything changed. Before that, Adam was in charge of all the creation God had made. After Adam disobeyed the one simple rule God had given him to obey, since Adam submitted to the word of satan over that of God, he also gave up his lordship, so to speak over the world God had created. That made satan the “god of this world” as it says in 2 Corinthians 4:4. That one act of sin changed everything. The Bible says whoever you obey, that is whose servant you are. That made man the servant of the devil. The next day when God came to visit Adam and Eve in the garden, Adam was ashamed and hid from Him. When God asked why, Adam admitted that he and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, because they wanted the knowledge that God had. At least that is what the snake told them they would get if they ate it.

So now, we humans are a fallen lot. We take after our original father, Adam. We have a sin nature, a rebellious nature. I believe that if Adam hadn’t fallen into sin, then the next guy would have. It wouldn’t have taken long for someone to blow it, right? But God gave us our free will so that when we chose to love Him and obey Him, it would mean something. It would mean everything to Him. It means enough for Him to die in our place to pay the price for us so that we can go back to having a relationship and a friendship with Him. He wants that so very much, He gave His own Son to die in our place! This kind of love is beyond human understanding. We just have to take it by faith.

So, I’m laying the foundation here to prove to you, dear Reader, that God still wants that original friendship and love relationship with you as an individual. He delights in you! I believe He created humans because He dearly wanted people who would freely choose to love Him. Who would need Him and rely on Him to meet their needs and care for them. Just like a great Father and child relationship. So it makes total sense that He would make it easy for us to contact Him. If we just call out to Him He hears us and answers us. Jesus said after He goes back to Heaven, after the Resurrection, that He would not talk much with us because He does not have anything to do with the god of this world. But He does communicate with us in many ways other than talking out loud, as He once did in the garden with Adam. He speaks through His Word the living, breathing Bible. Suddenly a phrase will jump out at you, and it will be an answer to the very thing that’s on your mind! Or you will sense a message in your spirit from the Holy Spirit. There are many ways He talks to us. I’ll go into them in another post. But for today, know that if you call out to God He will answer you. Look for His answer! You will hear it, or see it. He is anxious to have that relationship restored with His human children! And those of us who do walk and talk with Him everyday know that we would never want a life without His loving friendship and care. His presence fills you up inside. It is beautiful and unmistakable! It means everything to the human heart. It’s what we were made for! When you finally connect to the reason for your very existence, life has meaning and joy. It has a purpose and a destiny. You find fulfillment. He formed us from clay in the garden so He could have someone to love!

Praying in Tongues, Is It for Real?

Are you a Christian? Do you pray in tongues? What are ‘tongues’ and why should you care?
If you already know Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord, then you should absolutely want the gift of tongues.
I wasted years holding off on this. I was born again, loved the Lord, but that tongues stuff was just too weird for me. I thought it was either some kind of occult thing or it was just a practice of the early church that went away with the first apostles.
Something kept quietly nagging me deep inside once in a while about it. I kept pushing it back thinking, ‘I’ll deal with that later.”
So later finally came when I began to follow Derek Prince on YouTube. I got into the habit of listening to him teach as I fell asleep at night. I loved what I was learning so much! I entered a new dimension of my walk with the Lord through all the things Derek taught. I ordered a workbook from his ministry called Self Study Bible Course on basics of the Christian faith, and this workbook included the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Well, after I finished Study No. 7, I couldn’t deny any longer that speaking and praying in tongues was for me. It is a gift. A free gift of the Holy Spirit. But it only comes to those Christians who are baptized, or filled, with the Holy Spirit.

In Luke 11:13 we learn what good gift God the Father will give to all His children who ask Him. It’s the Holy Spirit Himself!! All we need to do is ask the Father, in Jesus name and believe that we have what we ask! We know we are asking according to His will so we know we have the Holy Ghost! Yes, it is by faith. But the Christian walk is a faith walk. Faith is the only way to please our God. He is a faith God!
My little study went on to show me that the first thing that happened when the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples on Pentecost is that they began to speak with other tongues! Acts 2:4 Wow! Same thing happened to the people that Peter was preaching to in the house of Cornelius. They began to speak in tongues!
Paul himself declares in his letter to the Corinthian Christians (1 Corinthians 14:18) that he spoke in tongues ‘more than
you all.’ He also says that all Christians can pray in tongues, and he wishes that they did! 1 Corinthians 14:5

When a Christian speaks or prays in tongues, he does 4 things:
1. He speaks to God. It’s like a secret love language between you and God that not even the devil can hack into!
2. He speaks mysteries in the spirit. That means the Christian’s spirit, with the help of the Holy Ghost, speaks things to God that not even his own intellectual mind knows that he needs to talk to God about.
3. He edifies himself. This simply means that he builds himself up. Becomes stronger and stronger in the Lord and in His Spirit. He grows in his spiritual walk with God.
4. Jude teaches us that praying in tongues builds our faith.

The book of 1 Corinthians in the Bible has a lot to say about praying in tongues. I also learned much about this subject from my other mentor, Kenneth E. Hagin. If you ever wondered how anyone could possibly spend hours in prayer, it’s because they pray ‘in the Spirit.’ The Holy Spirit takes over and prays in your spirit, through you and for you.

After an honest look at all this evidence, I told the Lord, “Lord, please fill me with your Holy Spirit. If You want me to pray in tongues then I will obey You. I will feel foolish, but Lord, I’ll gladly feel foolish for You.” I opened my mouth and let the Holy Spirit fill it with His language and His prayers. I have never looked back. I was missing so much!
The wonderful Amplified Bible says, “…the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.
And He (God) Who searches the hearts of men knows what is in the mind of the Holy Spirit (what His intent is), because the Spirit intercedes and pleads before God in behalf of the saints (that’s us, Christians…did you know God considers us all saints after we are born again?) according to and in harmony with God’s will.
If you are a Christian who has not yet been filled with the Holy Ghost, nor spoken or prayed in a private prayer language to our Lord, don’t wait another day! Your walk with God will deepen and grow like never before. The gifts of the Holy Spirit will begin to manifest in your life. God will be so real to you! Just step out in faith, like a child, and so what if you feel a little foolish? It doesn’t last long, I promise!

Are you searching for truth like I was as a Catholic? I want to share what I learned with you. There is a lot to it. I mean whether or not Catholicism is the truth. As an ex-Catholic, I know. I wasn’t about to leave my Catholic church behind unless I was absolutely convinced. I was raised in it from birth. All my relatives were Catholic, as well as most of my friends. So I needed strong evidence.

I’ll get right to the points that forever changed me, changed my mind and my heart. I was lead to go buy a Bible. I went to a Catholic book store and bought one. I was having doubts and questions about the Mass, confession, everything.

My new Bible opened right to 1Timothy2:5. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;” Well, that answered the question about praying to saints, Mary, and going to a priest for answers. My one and only mediator was Christ.

Salvation. The Catholic Church never talked about it. I never heard much about how to get to heaven. It was sort of assumed that you’d get there somehow, someday. You’d probably have to burn in Purgatory for awhile to purge your sins away. After all no one is perfect and sinless, right? If you die after having just gone to confession to a priest, you would go straight to heaven of course. Or if you had just said one of those prayers, or string of prayers the church attached a plenary indulgence to. That means you got a free ticket out of Purgatory! (BTW Purgatory is just like hell, except temporary) They don’t teach this stuff too much anymore because it’s not very popular. However it is definitely the doctrine of the Catholic church. What about salvation? Isn’t that pretty important??? Well, in my new Bible I found out that Jesus main message everywhere He went was teaching people that they needed SALVATION! Salvation means ‘saving.’ Saving from what?? From HELL! Yeah, I’d say that should be the number one message of the true church. As a Catholic, the topic of ‘where would you go when you die?’ didn’t really come up. You figured you’d make it if you were a ‘good person’ and obeyed the rules as best you could. It wasn’t the main issue. Well, come to find out it was the main issue for Jesus Christ!

As a Catholic I never heard that I had to be ‘Born Again’ in order to go to heaven! What? Really? They never thought that needed to be shouted from the rooftops? Jesus is the One who first said those words ‘born again’ to Nicodemus! Nicodemus came to Him quietly, didn’t want anyone to know about it. He asked Jesus how he could be sure to get to Heaven. Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” John 3:3

As a Catholic I was still hung up on two things. From childhood I had believed that only a Catholic priest could administer the sacrament of absolution. That is, he is the only one who could hear your sins and then pronounce that you were forgiven of those sins. Of course, when you did a few more sins, you had to go back and get another confession/absolution from a Catholic priest. It always felt to me like putting my soul through a spiritual car wash. You had to get a wash every week or so. There wasn’t any other way to do it. Or was there?? Then I was lead to this verse which blew me away: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 Wow! Combine that with the verse in my first point above, and it was now obvious I didn’t need to go to the Catholic car wash any more! I could go right to God! I could keep it private between Him and me. That felt so right, so good. I had never felt right about telling my most intimate sins to a man. It was embarrassing! I now know that our loving Father never meant for us to do that. It’s between Him and me.

The last thing to go was Transubstantiation. That’s the Catholic teaching that the bread and wine at Mass are actually and really, materially, turned into Jesus’ body and blood. The Catholic church goes on to say that if anyone denies that, they are anathema, which means damned to hell! Well, I had believed this teaching from as far back as I could remember. At the last supper, didn’t Jesus bless the bread and wine and tell His disciples that this bread is My body, and this wine is My blood? I prayed and asked God to show me. I struggled so hard with this one. If it turned out that this core teaching of the Roman Catholic church wasn’t true, then I was out of there. That was it for me! I read the scriptures over and over again that spoke about this. I bought all the Catholic doctrinal books I could find regarding the teachings put forth by the Popes, who by the way, are supposed to be Christ’s representative on earth, completely holy and sanctified. So I took a second look and saw that Jesus was sitting there with His apostles saying, ‘Take eat; this is my body.” Did the apostles think they were chewing on Jesus as He sat there? No, of course not! It was symbolic. Then He said, “Drink, all of you” regarding the cup of wine. He goes on to say, “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” There are several things here. He is sitting there passing the cup of wine to His disciples. Did they think they were draining His arteries of real blood? Then, this was huge for me, AFTER He calls the wine His blood (which the Catholic church says is the moment when He institutes the sacrament of transubstantiation) He then calls it the FRUIT OF THE VINE again! It wouldn’t be the fruit of the vine anymore, would it?? No. This, too, is obviously symbolic. In Luke 22:19, Jesus says, “This is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” It is to be a beautiful, holy remembrance of Our Lord Jesus until that day that we will eat and drink with Jesus again in the Father’s kingdom. Will we be chewing on flesh and drinking real blood in Heaven? What do you think?

If you are a Catholic seeking the truth, look no further than your own Catholic Bible. The teachings of the Roman Catholic church do not lead us to heaven. They do not teach what Jesus taught. They do not teach that by GRACE are you saved through FAITH, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast. Ephesians 2:5. And again: Romans 3:28, “Therefore we conclude that man is justified by faith WITHOUT the deeds of the law.”

Read the gospels and the New Testament as if you had never heard any of this before. If you had just met Jesus when He walked the earth, and listened to Him talk, what conclusion would you come to?

Today I am thrilled to be a Born Again follower of Jesus Christ through His Holy Word, the Bible. The Truth will set you free!

Hi! I'm Julian, and I'm glad you're here! My goal is to share with you some spiritual treasures that will transform your life, lift you up and bless you! I want everyone to grasp the reality of the spirit side of life. Doing so has enriched my life beyond measure. Scripture is alive, powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. This Word of God is the manual for living. The Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ is the teacher and guide. So let's have an adventure into the spirit life!